Paper Title
Effect of Reinforcement on Mechanical Properties of Al Alloy

Abstract
In the present research, multi-pass friction stir processing (FSP) was employed on both reinforced and unreinforced 1100 Al alloy. The reinforcement powder used was a Ti-6Al-4V powder. The number of passes was limited to four due to the unfavourable results observed for excessive number of passes above four. After four(4) cumulative FSP passes, the microstructures of the samples were observed with Optical microscopic while the tensile tests were done at room temperature via an Instron electronic tensile machine. The result reveals that the microstructure of the first two passes of the reinforced Al alloy shows clustering of Ti-6Al-4V particles and uneven distribution of the particles, which in turn affects the strength of the samples. Also at 2passes, the ultimate tensile stress of the reinforced 1100 Al alloy was 20% lesser than the unreinforced sample, while at 3 passes for both samples, a noticeable 30% increment was seen for the reinforced Al alloy when compared with the unreinforced sample. The result shows that to successfully reinforce Al alloy, to achieve a higher strength, better wear performance and even dispersion of particles, at least 3-passes should be employed. Index Terms— Microstructure, multi pass friction stir processing, Tensile property, wear